The west coast of the Abacos glittered in the afternoon sun, pinkish-white beaches and palms, tidal marsh, a scrubby olive-green landscape with patches of pine trees standing up from the low bush.

"A New Town for the 21st Century," reads a billboard rising from the drab and scrubby landscape approaching Exit 54 on the Florida Turnpike.

The man stared out over the hot, dry scrubby landscape.

Anyone trying to get there would take the highway to Quirm and, at some unmarked point out in the scrubby landscape, would turn off and strike out towards the sand dunes.

It is about 400 miles from the abundance here to the barren, scrubby landscape of Baran, in the southeast corner of Rajasthan.

When Andrew and I crossed a dry, scrubby landscape, I thought of the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka, with its arid fields, hot winds and stunted trees flowered orange and red.

The dig meanders through a scrubby landscape on the opposite side of the road, and at first glance seems to be mainly rubble with some vestiges of temples, baths, a forum and several early Christian basilicas.

Both city and country are slumbering and peculiarly depopulated: empty courtyards, nearly empty streets, vast, scrubby landscapes unlikely to be plowed.

Beyond the construction work at the Tuscany, the beach is completely deserted and the sand hardens into a scrubby landscape.

Robert Adams hinted that the insignificant, scrubby landscapes we pass through, landscapes that refuse to accommodate standard ideas of art, encode a new kind of esthetic message and deserve attention.